WHAT RYAN DOESN KNOW!--March 20, 2018
Today I happened to find a post by Ryan Bellinson, who lives in Europe, about the Pearl District on the Internet under the heading:
The Pearl: A Gentrification Story from Portland posted February 1, 2016. Here are a few excerpts:
Just 30 years ago the Pearl District was the most dilapidated, bleak neighborhood in the city; an abandoned industrial neighborhood inhabited by the homeless, seemingly forgotten by the rest of the city. The Pearl District’s remarkable raise from a forgotten, ugly stain on the city’s image to one of the most recognizable neighborhoods in the Pacific Northwest did happen by accident.
In part due to low real estate cost, developers began punching land and slowly redeveloping in The Pearl District throughout the 1980s. 1994 marked a year for the Pearl District in which rapid gentrification truly took its form, Portland planners published their River District Development Plan, an urban renewal project centered around gentrifying northwest Portland, most substantially the Pearl District.
I couldn't let this stand so I posted a reply called these comments "rubbish." The guy can't find the right word to use. He knows nothing about Portland's homeless population and where they live. He knows absolutely nothing about what happened in the NW Triangle in the 80s and early 90s. He doesn't know the difference between what was happening in the NW Industrial Triangle and the River District before 1997. He has no idea how and where adaptive reuse occurred in contrast to new construction by HSP, Inc.